English Past and Present Part 16

{Sidenote: '_Court-cards_'}

'_Court_-cards', that is, the king, queen, and knave in each suit, were once 'coat-cards'{261}; having their name from the long splendid 'coat'

(vestis talaris) with which they were arrayed. Probably 'coat' after a while did not perfectly convey its original meaning and intention; being no more in common use for the long garment reaching down to the heels; and then 'coat' was easily exchanged for 'court', as the word is now both spelt and p.r.o.nounced, seeing that nowhere so fitly as in a Court should such splendidly arrayed personages be found. A public house in the neighbourhood of London having a few years since for its sign "The George _Canning_" is already "The George and _Cannon_",--so rapidly do these transformations proceed, so soon is that forgotten which we suppose would never be forgotten. "Welsh _rarebit_" becomes "Welsh _rabbit_"{262}; and '_farced_' or stuffed 'meat' becomes "forced meat".

Even the mere determination to make a word _look_ English, to put it into an English shape, without thereby so much as seeming to attain any result in the way of etymology, this is very often sufficient to bring about a change in its spelling, and even in its form{263}. It is thus that 'sipahi' has become 'sepoy'; and only so could 'weissager' have taken its present form of 'wiseacre'{264}.

{Sidenote: _Transformation of Words_}

It is not very uncommon for a word, while it is derived from one word, to receive a certain impulse and modification from another. This extends sometimes beyond the spelling, and in cases where it does so, would hardly belong to our present theme. Still I may notice an instance or two. Thus our 'obsequies' is the Latin 'exequiae', but formed under a certain impulse of 'obsequium', and seeking to express and include the observant honour of that word. 'To refuse' is 'recusare', while yet it has derived the 'f' of its second syllable from 'refutare'; it is a medley of the two{265}. The French 'rame', an oar, is 'remus', but that modified by an unconscious recollection of 'ramus'. 'Orange' is no doubt a Persian word, which has reached us through the Arabic, and which the Spanish 'naranja' more nearly represents than any form of it existing in the other languages of Europe. But what so natural as to think of the orange as the _golden_ fruit, especially when the "_aurea_ mala" of the Hesperides were familiar to all antiquity? There cannot be a doubt that 'aurum', 'oro', 'or', made themselves felt in the shapes which the word a.s.sumed in the languages of the West, and that here we have the explanation of the change in the first syllable, as in the low Latin 'aurantium', 'orangia', and in the French 'orange', which has given us our own.

It is foreign words, or words adopted from foreign languages, as might beforehand be expected, which are especially subjected to such transformations as these. The soul which the word once had in its own language, having, for as many as do not know that language, departed from it, or at least not being now any more to be recognized by such as employ the word, these are not satisfied till they have put another soul into it, and it has thus become alive to them again. Thus--to take first one or two very familiar instances, but which serve as well as any other to ill.u.s.trate my position--the Bellerophon becomes for our sailors the 'Billy Ruffian', for what can they know of the Greek mythology, or of the slayer of Chimaera? an iron steamer, the Hirondelle, now or lately plying on the Tyne, is the 'Iron Devil'. '_Contre_ danse', or dance in which the parties stand _face to face_ with one another, and which ought to have appeared in English as '_counter_ dance', does become '_country_ dance'{266}, as though it were the dance of the country folk and rural districts, as distinguished from the quadrille and waltz and more artificial dances of the town{267}. A well known rose, the "rose _des quatre saisons_", or of the four seasons, becomes on the lips of some of our gardeners, the "rose of the _quarter sessions_", though here it is probable that the eye has misled, rather than the ear. 'Dent de lion', (it is spelt 'dentdelyon' in our early writers) becomes 'dandylion', "_chaude_ melee", or an affray in _hot_ blood, "_chance_-medley"{268}, 'causey' (chaussee) becomes 'causeway'{269}, 'rachitis' 'rickets'{270}, and in French 'mandragora' 'main de gloire'{271}.

{Sidenote: '_Necromancy_'}

'Necromancy' is another word which, if not now, yet for a long period was erroneously spelt, and indeed a.s.sumed a different shape, under the influence of an erroneous derivation; which, curiously enough, even now that it has been dismissed, has left behind it the marks of its presence, in our common phrase, "the _Black_ Art". I need hardly remind you that 'necromancy' is a Greek word, which signifies, according to its proper meaning, a prophesying by aid of the dead, or that it rests on the presumed power of raising up by potent spells the dead, and compelling them to give answers about things to come. We all know that it was supposed possible to exercise such power; we have a very awful example of it in the story of the witch of Endor, and a very horrid one in Lucan{272}. But the Latin medieval writers, whose Greek was either little or none, spelt the word, 'nigromantia', as if its first syllables had been Latin: at the same time, not wholly forgetting the original meaning, but in fact getting round to it though by a wrong process, they understood the dead by these 'nigri', or blacks, whom they had brought into the word{273}. Down to a rather late period we find the forms, '_negro_mancer' and '_negro_mancy' frequent in English.

{Sidenote: _Words Misspelt_}

'Pleurisy' used often to be spelt, (I do not think it is so now,) without an 'e' in the first syllable, evidently on the tacit a.s.sumption that it was from _plus pluris_{274}. When Shakespeare falls into an error, he "makes the offence gracious"; yet, I think, he would scarcely have written,

"For goodness growing to a _plurisy_ Dies of his own _too much_",

but that _he_ too derived 'plurisy' from _pluris_. This, even with the "small Latin and less Greek", which Ben Jonson allows him, he scarcely would have done, had the word presented itself in that form, which by right of its descent from p?e??? (being a pain, st.i.tch, or sickness _in the side_) it ought to have possessed. Those who for 'crucible' wrote 'chrysoble' (Jeremy Taylor does so) must evidently have done this under the a.s.sumption that the Greek for _gold_, and not the Latin for _cross_, lay at the foundation of this word. 'Anthymn' instead of 'anthem'

(Barrow so spells the word), rests plainly on a wrong etymology, even as this spelling clearly betrays what that wrong etymology is. 'Rhyme' with a 'y' is a modern misspelling; and would never have been but for the undue influence which the Greek 'rhythm' has exercised upon it. Spenser and his cotemporaries spell it 'rime'. 'Abominable' was by some etymologists of the seventeenth century spelt 'abhominable', as though it were that which departed from the human (ab homine) into the b.e.s.t.i.a.l or devilish.

In all these words which I have adduced last, the correct spelling has in the end resumed its sway. It is not so with 'frontisp_ie_ce', which ought to be spelt 'frontisp_i_ce' (it was so by Milton and others), being the low Latin 'frontispicium', from 'frons' and 'aspicio', the forefront of the building, that part which presents itself to the view.

It was only the entirely ungrounded notion that the word 'piece'

const.i.tutes the last syllable, which has given rise to our present orthography{275}.

{Sidenote: Wrong Spelling}

You may, perhaps, wonder that I have dwelt so long on these details of spelling; that I have bestowed on them so much of my own attention, that I have claimed for them so much of yours; yet in truth I cannot regard them as unworthy of our very closest heed. For indeed of how much beyond itself is accurate or inaccurate spelling the certain indication.

Thus when we meet 's_y_ren', for 's_i_ren', as so strangely often we do, almost always in newspapers, and often where we should hardly have expected (I met it lately in the _Quarterly Review_, and again in Gifford's _Ma.s.singer_), how difficult it is not to be "judges of evil thoughts", and to take this slovenly misspelling as the specimen and evidence of an inaccuracy and ignorance which reaches very far wider than the single word which is before us. But why is it that so much significance is ascribed to a wrong spelling? Because ignorance of a word's spelling at once argues ignorance of its origin and derivation. I do not mean that one who spells rightly may not be ignorant of it too, but he who spells wrongly is certainly so. Thus, to recur to the example I have just adduced, he who for 's_i_ren' writes 's_y_ren', certainly knows nothing of the magic _cords_ (se??a?) of song, by which those fair enchantresses were supposed to draw those that heard them to their ruin{276}.

Correct or incorrect orthography being, then, this note of accurate or inaccurate knowledge, we may confidently conclude where two spellings of a word exist, and are both employed by persons who generally write with precision and scholarship, that there must be something to account for this. It will generally be worth your while to inquire into the causes which enable both spellings to hold their ground and to find their supporters, not ascribing either one or the other to mere carelessness or error. It will in these cases often be found that two spellings exist, because two views of the word's origin exist, and each of those spellings is the correct expression of one of these. The question therefore which way of spelling should continue, and wholly supersede the other, and which, while the alternative remains, we should ourselves employ, can only be settled by settling which of these etymologies deserves the preference. So is it, for example, with 'ch_y_mist' and 'ch_e_mist', neither of which has obtained in our common use the complete mastery over the other{277}. It is not here, as in some other cases, that one is certainly right, the other as certainly wrong: but they severally represent two different etymologies of the word, and each is correct according to its own. If we are to spell 'ch_y_mist' and 'ch_y_mistry', it is because these words are considered to be derived from the Greek word, ????, sap; and the chymic art will then have occupied itself first with distilling the juice and sap of plants, and will from this have derived its name. I have little doubt, however, that the other spelling, 'ch_e_mist', not 'ch_y_mist', is the correct one. It was not with the distillation of herbs, but with the amalgamation of metals, that chemistry occupied itself at its rise, and the word embodies a reference to Egypt, the land of Ham or 'Cham'{278}, in which this art was first practised with success.

{Sidenote: '_Satyr_', '_Satire_'}

Of how much confusion the spelling which used to be so common, 'satyr'

for 'satire', is at once the consequence, the expression, and again the cause; not indeed that this confusion first began with us{279}; for the same already found place in the Latin, where 'satyricus' was continually written for 'satiricus' out of a false a.s.sumption of the ident.i.ty between the Roman _satire_ and the Greek _satyric_ drama. The Roman 'satira',--I speak of things familiar to many of my hearers,--is properly a _full_ dish (lanx being understood)--a dish heaped up with various ingredients, a 'farce' (according to the original signification of that word), or hodge-podge; and the word was transferred from this to a form of poetry which at first admitted the utmost variety in the materials of which it was composed, and the shapes into which these materials were wrought up; being the only form of poetry which the Romans did _not_ borrow from the Greeks. Wholly different from this, having no one point of contact with it in its form, its history, or its intention, is the 'satyric' drama of Greece, so called because Silenus and the 'Satyrs' supplied the chorus; and in their nave selfishness, and mere animal instincts, held up before men a mirror of what they would be, if only the divine, which is also the truly human, element of humanity, were withdrawn; what man, all that properly made him man being withdrawn, would prove.

{Sidenote: '_Mid-wife_', '_Nostril_'}

And then what light, as we have already seen, does the older spelling of a word often cast upon its etymology; how often does it clear up the mystery, which would otherwise have hung about it, or which _had_ hung about it till some one had noticed and turned to profit this its earlier spelling. Thus 'dirge' is always spelt 'dirige' in early English. This 'dirige' may be the first word in a Latin psalm or prayer once used at funerals; there is a reasonable probability that the explanation of the word is here; at any rate, if it is not here, it is nowhere{280}. The derivation of 'mid-wife' is uncertain, and has been the subject of discussion; but when we find it spelt 'medewife' and 'meadwife', in Wiclif's Bible, this leaves hardly a doubt that it is the _wife_ or woman who acts for a _mead_ or reward{281}. In cases too where there was no mystery hanging about a word, how often does the early spelling make clear to all that which was before only known to those who had made the language their study. For example, if an early edition of Spenser should come into your hands, or a modern one in which the early spelling is retained, what continual lessons in English might you derive from it.

Thus 'nostril' is always spelt by him and his cotemporaries 'nosethrill'; a little earlier it was 'nosethirle'. Now 'to thrill' is the same as to drill or pierce; it is plain then here at once that the word signifies the orifice or opening with which the _nose_ is _thrilled_, drilled, or pierced. We might have read the word for ever in our modern spelling without being taught this. 'Ell' tells us nothing about itself; but in 'eln' used in Holland's translation of Camden, we recognize 'ulna' at once.

Again, the 'morris' or 'morrice-dance', which is alluded to so often by our early poets, as it is now spelt informs us nothing about itself; but read '_moriske_ dance', as it is generally spelt by Holland and his cotemporaries, and you will scarcely fail to perceive that of which indeed there is no manner of doubt; namely, that it was so called either because it was really, or was supposed to be, a dance in use among the _moriscoes_ of Spain, and from thence introduced into England{282}.

Again, philologers tell us, and no doubt rightly, that our 'cray-fish', or 'craw-fish', is the French 'ecrevisse'. This is true, but certainly it is not self-evident. Trace however the word through these successive spellings, 'krevys' (Lydgate), 'crevish' (Gascoigne), 'craifish'

(Holland), and the chasm between 'cray-fish' or 'craw-fish' and 'ecrevisse' is by aid of these three intermediate spellings bridged over at once; and in the fact of our Gothic 'fish' finding its way into this French word we see only another example of a law, which has been already abundantly ill.u.s.trated in this lecture{283}.

{Sidenote: '_Emmet_', '_Ant_'}

In other ways also an accurate taking note of the spelling of words, and of the successive changes which it has undergone, will often throw light upon them. Thus we may know, others having a.s.sured us of the fact, that 'ant' and 'emmet' were originally only two different spellings of one and the same word; but we may be perplexed to understand how two forms of a word, now so different, could ever have diverged from a single root. When however we find the different spellings, 'emmet', 'emet', 'amet', 'amt', 'ant', the gulf which appeared to separate 'emmet' from 'ant' is bridged over at once, and we do not merely know on the a.s.surance of others that these two are in fact identical, their differences being only superficial, but we perceive clearly in what manner they are so{284}.

Even before any close examination of the matter, it is hard not to suspect that 'runagate' is in fact another form of 'renegade', slightly transformed, as so many words, to put an English signification into its first syllable; and then the meaning gradually modified in obedience to the new derivation which was a.s.sumed to be its original and true one.

Our suspicion of this is very greatly strengthened (for we see how very closely the words approach one another), by the fact that 'renega_d_e'

is constantly spelt 'renega_t_e' in our old authors, while at the same time the denial of _faith_, which is now a necessary element in 'renegade', and one differencing it inwardly from 'runagate', is altogether wanting in early use--the denial of _country_ and of the duties thereto owing being all that is implied in it. Thus it is constantly employed in Holland's _Livy_ as a rendering of 'perfuga'{285}; while in the one pa.s.sage where 'runagate' occurs in the Prayer Book Version of the Psalms (Ps. lxviii. 6), a reference to the original will show that the translators could only have employed it there on the ground that it also expressed rebel, revolter, and not runaway merely{286}.

{Sidenote: _a.s.similating Power of English_}

I might easily occupy your attention much longer, so little barren or unfruitful does this subject of spelling appear likely to prove; but all things must have an end; and as I concluded my first lecture with a remarkable testimony borne by an ill.u.s.trious German scholar to the merits of our English tongue, I will conclude my last with the words of another, not indeed a German, but still of the great Germanic stock; words resuming in themselves much of which we have been speaking upon this and upon former occasions: "As our bodies", he says, "have hidden resources and expedients, to remove the obstacles which the very art of the physician puts in its way, so language, ruled by an indomitable inward principle, triumphs in some degree over the folly of grammarians.

Look at the English, polluted by Danish and Norman conquests, distorted in its genuine and n.o.ble features by old and recent endeavours to mould it after the French fashion, invaded by a hostile entrance of Greek and Latin words, threatening by increasing hosts to overwhelm the indigenous terms. In these long contests against the combined power of so many forcible enemies, the language, it is true, has lost some of its power of inversion in the structure of sentences, the means of denoting the difference of gender, and the nice distinctions by inflection and termination--almost every word is attacked by the spasm of the accent and the drawing of consonants to wrong positions; yet the old English principle is not overpowered. Trampled down by the ign.o.ble feet of strangers, its springs still retain force enough to restore itself. It lives and plays through all the veins of the language; it impregnates the innumerable strangers entering its dominions with its temper, and stains them with its colour, not unlike the Greek which in taking up oriental words, stripped them of their foreign costume, and bid them to appear as native Greeks"{287}.

{FOOTNOTES}

{228} In proof that it need not be so, I would only refer to a paper, _On Orthographical Expedients_, by Edwin Guest, Esq., in the _Transactions of the Philological Society_, vol. iii. p. 1.

{229} [The scientific treatises on Phonetics of Mr. Alexander J. Ellis and Dr. Henry Sweet have surmounted the difficulty of registering sounds with great accuracy.]

{230} I have not observed this noticed in our dictionaries as the original form of the phrase. There is no doubt however of the fact; see _Stanihurst's Ireland_, p. 33, in Holinshed's _Chronicles_. [Rather from _torvien_, to throw,--Skeat].

{231} _Notes and Queries_, No. 147.

{232} See Boswell's _Life of Johnson_, Croker's edit. 1848, p. 233.

{233} [The _b_ was purposely foisted into these words by bookmen to suggest their Latin derivation; it did not belong to them in earlier English. The same may be said of the _g_, intruded into 'deign' and 'feign'.]

{234} A chief phonographer writes to me to deny that this is the present spelling (1856) of 'Europe'. It was so when this paragraph was written. [Most people would now consider [Yeuroap] as American p.r.o.nunciation.]

{235} Quintilian has expressed himself with the true dignity of a scholar on this matter (_Inst._ 1, 6, 45): Consuetudinem sermonis vocabo _consensum eruditorum_; sicut vivendi consensum bonorum.--How different from innovations like this the changes in the spelling of German which J. Grimm, so far as his own example may reach, _has_ introduced; and the still bolder and more extensive ones which in the _Preface_ to his _Deutsches Worterbuch_, pp. liv.-lxii., he avows his desire to see introduced;--as the employment of _f_, not merely where it is at present used, but also wherever _v_ is now employed; the subst.i.tuting of the _v_, which would be thus disengaged, for _w_, and the entire dismissal of _w_. They may be advisable, or they may not; it is not for strangers to offer an opinion; but at any rate they are not a seizing of the fluctuating, superficial accidents of the present, and a seeking to give permanent authority to these, but they all rest on a deep historic study of the language, and of the true genius of the language.

{236} Croker's edit. 1848, pp. 57, 61, 233.

{237} [An incorrect conclusion. Almost all 'ea' words were p.r.o.nounced 'ai' down to the eighteenth century. Thus 'great' was a true rhyme to 'cheat' and 'complete', their ordinary p.r.o.nunciation being 'grait', 'chait', 'complait'.]

{238} [i.e. 'Lunnun'.]

{239} _A proposal for correcting, improving and ascertaining the English Tongue_, 1711, Works, vol. ix, pp. 139-59.

{240} ['Devest' was still in use till the end of the eighteenth century, but 'divest' is already found in _King Lear_, 1605, i, 1, 50.]

{241} Pygmaei, quasi _cubitales_ (Augustine).

{242} First so used by Theophrastus in Greek, and by Pliny in Latin.--The real ident.i.ty of the two words explains Milton's use of 'diamond' in _Paradise Lost_, b. 7; and also in that sublime pa.s.sage in his _Apology for Smectymnuus_: "Then zeal, whose substance is ethereal, arming in complete _diamond_".--Diez (_Worterbuch d. Roman. Sprachen_, p. 123) supposes, not very probably, that it was under a certain influence of '_dia_fano', the translucent, that 'adamante' was in the Italian, whence we have derived the word, changed into '_dia_mante'.

{243} [Similarly _jowl_ for _chowl_ or _chavel_.]

{244} _Richard III_, Act iv, Sc. 4.